I believe Palo Alto ran into some tough luck with illness toward the end of cross country and that 5th place finish may not have been a good representation of their talent.

In regards to the CBEDs in CCS, most schools that qualify for the state meet from our section are at a big disadvantage at the state meet. St. Francis, the Division 2 state champion would have also been a division 3 school in any other section. According to Jesuit coach Walt Lange, CCS had the most teams in the "wrong" divisions at state based on their school size. All you have to do is look at our teams in Division I and you can see that most of those schools near the bottom of that division are not really Division I schools.

Unless we start to suddenly place our teams in the top 10 at state, we are going to continue to lose state meet berths to the point that most divisions will just qualify only the top two teams to state.

There are a lot of comments on this blog about the ineffectiveness of the CCS board in advocating for our teams and kids, but Albert’s comments above are the best indictment of the board’s malfeasance I have read yet.

Yes, 7:43, Bell won the D1 title but they were not dominant and they lose their best runners next year. MS has LA, Homestead, PA as 1,2,3 next year with Bell in a rebuilding year. 4:10, I assume you picked SF for the D2 winner. They should go into next year as a top 5 team in the country with a great chance to get back to NXN. Westmont moves back to D2 so Mcquiddy will be in the mix for CCS top 3 and maybe the only way, along with Willow Glen’s Dal Canto, to break up a SF perfect 15 next year.

Marina, Design Tech & Menlo should all be D5 based on the rest of the State's Sections of 600 or below. Even though the other Divisions aren't fair either, but we should begin somewhere, so CCS D5 at least can be equal to the other State sections without shifting the numbers too much.

"There are a lot of comments on this blog about the ineffectiveness of the CCS board in advocating for our teams and kids, but Albert’s comments above are the best indictment of the board’s malfeasance I have read yet."

The divisions in CCS are to maximize competitive fairness at the CCS level. I doubt anyone at CCS disagrees that it negatively impacts CCS schools at the state level, but that is not the goal.

Please remember that for years the divisions were all the same across the state, and that was changed because it caused wildly uneven divisions at the section level. In other words, most schools complained about those divisions.

If you feel that it is more important to help a small number of schools at the state level at the expense of the bulk of schools within your section, well, that's your prerogative. But to characterize it as malfeasance or ineffectiveness is completely missing the point.

Of course, the real way to "solve" this problem is to reduce the number of divisions...

I think the CCS board is more guilty of negligence than malfeasance. Their laissez-faire attitude toward league and section issues makes it seem like they don't care about our sport. It is easy to excuse them for inaction by saying they leave it up to the teams, coaches, and the leagues to come forward with proposals. But real leadership means guiding the stakeholders through a process to make changes that will strengthen the section's position. Having a pro-forma meeting at the end of each season where they listen to proposed changes, typically without action, does not dispel the notion that XC is subordinate to other "premiere" sports.

The problem with XC divisions isn't malfeasance of the CCS board, it's that State-level divisions don't work on the small sample of the CCS, and the root of the problem is that the Southern Section is unbelievably huge. Did you know they define their divisions through the same process CCS does (set a bar for division 5, then divide the rest into equal size divisions)? The difference is, there are 96 different leagues in the SS, and almost 600 schools. There's only 121 schools in CCS XC. There are 93 schools in SS Division 1 alone, which they define as enrollment of 2470+. 32 of those have enrollment over 3,000, 5 have enrollment over 4,000, and one (Santiago HS of Corona) has CBED enrollment of 5,058(!!).

Of the 121 schools in CCS, three have CBED enrollment of 3,000+, and only 25 are 2,000+.

Want to see what the CCS would look like with SS lines?Division 1: 10 schools (draw the line between Santa Teresa and Menlo-Atherton)Division 2: 12 schools (draw the line between Los Gatos and Palo Alto)Division 3: 33 schools (draw the line between Soledad and Burlingame)Division 4: 37 schools (draw the line between The King's Academy and Menlo)Division 5: 29 schools

Even more fun, want to see what the SS would look like with CCS divisions?D1: 189 schoolsD2: (I'm not going to go on, but the data are available in this pdf. That number alone should illustrate my point)

6:52 is right on about the intention of the divisions, and I remember the last few years of the unequal divisions - that D3 race was brutal. Keep in mind that the field at CCS is only approximately half of the participating schools anyway. The teams going to the state meet are a small minority of the population as a whole.

"I think the CCS board is more guilty of negligence than malfeasance. Their laissez-faire attitude toward league and section issues makes it seem like they don't care about our sport. It is easy to excuse them for inaction by saying they leave it up to the teams, coaches, and the leagues to come forward with proposals."

Please read the CCS constitution. It's not negligence for them to leave it up to teams, coaches, and leagues to come forward with proposals, it's explicitly how they have to operate.

I always hear about it is on the coaches to make the rules. This is not true. I’ve seen rules made (I.e. “last qualifier” language changed to “8th qualifier” without a vote by coaches at the league level. I’ve seen passed proposals get shot down by administrators because our rules don’t fit in with football (seniors running JV). Remember when we voted for more qualifiers from CCS but they wouldn’t accept new rules at the start of the season, then was never voted on because they didn’t hold a meeting? So don’t give me that nonsense. Truth is those in charge are fine with the status quo.

Here’s a start... how about every XC team can run at CCS? How about we can qualify in the “preseason” like basketball, swimming, etc? We fail to line up the best teams and individuals in both XC and Track every year. But why change for the better unless it costs you money right?

I have asked this before but never got an answer: how do we vote the current CCS board out and someone who cares about XC/Track in? These people are clearly more interested in collecting a check than doing what is right for our sport.

Here is the Board of Managers:http://www.cifccs.org/governance/board/bom/index

Note, they are all administrators from schools (mostly principals and ADs). They are elected by the individual leagues. I guess some schools may pay their administrators extra for being on the CCS BOM.

"Remember when we voted for more qualifiers from CCS but they wouldn’t accept new rules at the start of the season"This, of course, is how it is written in the constitution and by-laws.

"I’ve seen passed proposals get shot down by administrators because our rules don’t fit in with football (seniors running JV)."And the administrators ARE who get to determine the rules.

"I’ve seen rules made (I.e. “last qualifier” language changed to “8th qualifier” without a vote by coaches at the league level."You have the process backwards. Coaches can originate proposals, but they don't get to vote on everything. Proposals can be made by schools, leagues, and the CCS itself, but it's the BOM that votes on them.

Seriously, everyone. Look at the CCS constitution and by-laws. It pretty much explains how everything works.

I am a league rep and everybody that I have worked with in NCS and CCS have been very professional and wanted what is best for each individual sport and athlete.

If we think there is an issue here, the change has to start from the league level. From there, you have to have a solution that will take care of said issue. Until a proposal is formed that can resolve that issue, nothing is going to be changed.

The problem with trying to have fair competition at state (which was pointed out above) is that the sections are quite different. No section can match the size and amount of teams in the SS.

One proposal that has been brought up is for the sections to run their meet just as it is now. From there, you reshuffle the state qualifying teams to their correct divisions at the state meet.

Somebody mentioned above that this only affects a small amount of schools that make the state meet. That is correct. However, those schools go to the state meet and if they can't get top 10 finishes, then the amount of qualifiers from CCS will lessen in future years. If we as a section are happy with sending 2 teams to state from each division and to finish 18th, 19th etc at state, then there is no need to change anything.

Has it been proposed in the past to eliminate certain divisions in the CCS?

The LA, Northern, SF, and Oakland sections all do not have certain divisions at all. I know the LA-section got rid of D4 to make more sense in qualifying out of sections. For example, all 7 teams from the Southern Section who went to state in D4 would have been mostly Division 2 (or D3) schools in the CCS. Perhaps a re-alignment is necessary and needed in the CCS?

@1:49 I think you will find a lot more complaints about league qualifying to the CCS than section qualifiers getting to state in track. Using league size instead of quality is the main issue. Unlike the CIF which rewards worthy sections for good showings at the state XC meet with additional slots, CCS does nothing to reward the better leagues thereby excluding a lot of talent from the section meet. They stick to a "size is the only metric" system which disadvantages smaller leagues with a greater concentration of talent.